Kristian and Kristen’s unique fall wedding at Erin Estates was a beautiful blend of romance, personality, and creativity. Set against the backdrop of a charming Ontario venue, their day was filled with gothic-inspired details. With rich colours, and deeply personal touches — from terrarium centerpieces with real skulls to an on-site tattoo artist. With only 48 guests, this intimate October celebration proved that small weddings can still be unforgettable.

COUPLE: Kristian & Kristen

DATE: October 13, 2024

CEREMONY & RECEPTION LOCATION: Erin Estate "We were looking to have a small wedding. Kristen looked around online for a simple farm themed venue, that wouldn't break the bank. She found Erin Estate online. It was a bit more pricy than we expected but they were 10min down the road so it was worth going for a visit. We loved it. It was the most beautiful and unique place, with so many interesting features and great people showing us around. So we ended up booking that day, at the first place we had seen. Ballooning the budget from day one but it was totally worth it and the perfect choice for our unique fall wedding." - K&K

GUEST #: "We had 48 guests attend our personal unique fall wedding!" - K

PHOTOGRAPHER: Fedora Media "Fedora Media was the number one recommended Photographer from Erin Estate. I sent them a message and we had a great call with Holly. We also met her at an open house at Erin Estate and got along really well, talking about Icelandic horses. They were great at organizing the family pictures so that every possible picture with the right people was taken. It was done fast enough that people were not standing around long. Then we had a lot of extra time to get photos of just the two of us. They knew the property well and got a lot of great pictures in very unique places and completely captured our unique fall wedding." - K&K

COLOUR PALETTE: "The colours we chose for our unique fall wedding followed a more gothic light feel. We had a dark red, midnight blue, metallic copper and various lighter shades like grays, cool purples and greens. I didn't want it to feel like we were doing a Halloween theme or going full vampire gothic. I wanted something on the lighter side of goth. It was deep and romantic and just what you'd expect for early October.

Being the graphic designer for my own wedding I made all sorts of fun extras for the unique fall wedding theme to come across. I made little terrariums with real skulls, flowers and light in them as centerpieces, my signage had dark blue swirling backgrounds with copper accents. Wax stamps on our save the date cards were a must! I loved how everything turned out, it was perfect!"- K

TELL US YOUR STORY: "I proposed to Kristen in the back of our 50 acre property. We took our horses out to a pretty location, and had a picnic. It took forever to get the right ring, but everyone that sees it says it's so her, and so unique. A few weeks later Kristen's dog of 16 years, Lilah, passed away. I like to tell her that Lilah was watching over her till she found an acceptable man to look after her, and that once we were engaged she could finally rest.We buried her by our pond, under a giant willow tree. We spent the next few weeks building a swing for that tree, and when we were done, Kristen proposed back to me. She had gotten a custom ring made for me, got down on one knee, and asked me to marrier her back. The ring has 3 materials, onyx, rose gold and meteorite, she said "The Onyx is my soul stone, the rose gold unites us, and the meteorite is because I’m out of this world". I love my ring, and I show it off to every girl I see, and talk about how amazing my wife is.We actually got married legally right after this. Friday October 13th, 2023 is our legal wedding that was only a month after our proposals. We had to do it quick because a Friday the 13th in October doesn't come around every year, and Kristen had said how great that day would be for over a year before this. We had a small gathering in Elora park with our parents and our Grandmas, is was simple and lovely.After that we thought about doing a bigger wedding and ended up finding Erin Estate. We planned for it to be October 13th 2024, a year after our wedding and our first anniversary. I did most of the wedding planning, even finding a dress shop for her after my dental hygienist had just gotten married and recommended it to us. I also got a custom suit that cost just as much as her dress, with an ascot, vest and skull lining in the jacket. Kristen also picked out some nice skull spacers for me too.One of the best parts of our unique fall wedding was the tattoo artist. Kristen had come across the idea online, and it turns out that there was one person in Toronto that did tattoos at weddings, and she happened to be free our weekend. Valerie was amazing to work with, and her husband (who is also a tattoo artist) made the whole evening run smoothly. Kristen designed us matching tattoos that we got a few weeks before. They have a deaths head moth and a lily of the valley on it in a ring formation.

We were the first to get tattooed at the wedding after the reception began. We added the words "Til Death" on them. Over the rest of the night, people were getting small tattoos non-stop. Valerie was doing one every 10 min, I think about half of guests got tattooed, and about half of those it was their first tattoo. We even got both of our parents to get one, and the last tattoo finished as the last song ended. It was an amazingly unique feature to have at the wedding, that our friends and family cannot stop talking about.One other cool idea the Kristen had was our signing board. We got a rustic wooded board off etsy with our last name on it. Kristen then bought a dozen wax seals with different pictures and a huge selection of wax colors. Everybody got to pick whatever colors they liked, and whatever seal represented them the most. The result was beautiful, and we can't wait to hang it up on our farm." - K

INVITATIONS: SOR Design

DECOR: SOR Design

FLORALS: August Tree Farm "The flowers were beautiful and brought our unique fall wedding to life." - K

BRIDES ATTIRE: Taylors Bridal

GROOMS ATTIRE: Brodericks

DJ: Kristian "Yes I was the DJ. I made multiple playlists for the day, and bought a cheap tablet to control it all night. Most of the background music was from Bridgerton, and the main playlist was all classic rock, 90s punk and emo, all over the place really. Then a late night playlist with some metal and weird songs." - K

MAKE-UP: Modern Makeup

WEDDING PLANNER: Rebecca Blance - Loving Embrace Events

CATERING: His Nibbs Catering

WEDDING TATTOOS: Toronto Wedding Tattoos

BIGGEST CHALLENGE: "The wedding was mostly planned by me. A year before the wedding I messaged all the preferred venders at Erin Estate, and everything was booked. The challenge was all the small things the Kristen remembered we needed: card box, signing board, colour pallet, decorations, invite card, favours, seating charts, songs, etc. These can all get over looked, and led to a month of getting all the small things together before the wedding. Kristen did an amazing job, and we ended up with a lot of unique features at our wedding.

The other challenge was telling our friends and family that this was a child free wedding. In our opinion a wedding is not a place for kids and we wanted to enjoy our day without worrying about what challenges that would pose. We are happy that everyone ended up understanding." - K

BEST MEMORY: "One of the best memories was after the ceremony, after the pictures, we went back to the castle to just hang out with a glass of wine, as a married couple. We were happy everything had gone well during the ceremony. Our planner had done an amazing job, so we didn't have to think about what else was going on.

We laughed about all the weird pictures we took, and about how everyone was standing during the ceremony because no one told them to sit down. We just hung out together, with our custom martinis and thought about how happy this day has been. And how happy the rest of our lives is going to be." - K&K

ADVICE FROM ONE COUPLE TO ANOTHER: "Put money where it counts. We put a lot into the venue, we splurged and got a tattoo artist, and most importantly we both got amazing outfits. Food gets eaten and flowers will die, but having really nice outfits that we both feel amazing in makes the whole day better. It makes you want to stare at your partner, and not care about what goes wrong around you. You both feel great and look great." - Kristian

"Do what you want. Everyone has opinions about price and date and colours and seating. This is your day and you should do it how you want. We are very easy going people and we like to make others happy, but this was the one day of our lives that everything was exactly how we wanted it. They may have to talk to some new people at dinner, and they may not understand some of the music, but you do, and when it's all said and done, you had the perfect time." - Kristen

You can see this unique fall wedding in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of The Wedding Ring Magazine

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT FEDORA MEDIA | To speak with Fedora Media about your wedding options, you can reach them using the form below.